That is to say, I was raised in a military family that spent the majority of my youth in the Southeastern United States, where Evangelical Christianity has a significant influence, and although my parents were not themselves particularly devoted to organized religion, members of my mother’s family were, so I was exposed to it now and again–so I end not knowing if, say, I was ever baptised, though I would be suprised if I wasn’t.
Anyway, I certainly haven’t considered myself a Christian since I could make an informed choice, and since leaving college I have been pretty open about it–while your average Christian and I certainly would certainly share a number of values, I suspect we would differ on many things as well, including _why_ we hold those values.
Still, I live in North Carolina and Billy Graham country is just a bit up the Interstate, so I’m sure that an awful lot of the people I interact with here would identify themselves as Christian, and perhaps even as Evangelicals. Normally that doesn’t even show up on my radar screen–as I said, we share a lot culturally, and although I’ve rejected a portion of that culture, I’ve hardly rejected all of it–but then I read something like “this”:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/03/60minutes/main524268.shtml, or I remember the fact that Jerry Falwell claiming “that September 11th was his God’s judgement on America”:http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/14/Falwell.apology/, and it absolutely scares the piss out of me.
As spectacular as September 11th was, it was hardly the first instance of domestic terror the US has ever experienced, and a lot of that prior work was done by just that sort of nutjob, who thinks his Christian God has told him to “bomb an abortion clinic”:http://cgi.cnn.com/US/9801/29/bombing.update/ or something moronic like that.
I wonder if those sorts of crimes will be ruled as terrorist actions by this all-too Evangelical government we seem to have elected?
